As mentioned on the official webpage of theCity of Vienna: a customized version of Debian with KDE, dubbed "Wienux" was chosen as the official alternative to MS Windows for the 18,000 PCs of the city. It is up to the individual workers to choose if they prefer a KDE Desktop or a Microsoft based system. The officials expect that about 4,800 machines can run KDE in the short term. Additionally, K3b is the official burning application of choice for "Wienux".

Lots of European cities and governmental agencies seem to be switching to Linux these days. Most use KDE rather than Gnome as the DE, so I'd imagine WEINUX would be no different. Adoption seems to be forthcoming in the US, but a little slower. Linux in the US has the aura of geekdom and difficulty for the average Joe. Some is true, but especially since good DEs like KDE present a logical, familiar, and easy-to-use GUI, a lot of the old "everything has to be done in the terminal" can be gone if you want it to.

WHY they are switching from Windows to Linux is the real question for us here. Not wanting to pay royalties to a foreign country (or at all?) Stability? To simply make a statement? What do you think? I'm asking a polite question...

I think all those reasons you make + freedom to change and control the code. Norway, for instance, has put its foot down on closed formats. I think that makes a lot of sense not just for Norway but for everyone. Should a company really be using a proprietary format to store company information or secrets in?

Who knows what's going on with the proprietary format, it could be storing more information than you know and on the other hand one day you might find yourself unable to access your data in a useful manner. What if Microsoft finds cause to revoke your software license and you have 100% of the company's information assets encoded in a Microsoft format? You're screwed!

I didn't immediately think of the revocation of licenses = unable to retrieve files.

That WILL happen with the "Next Generation Secure Computing Base" aka Palladium if it and the Fritz chips become part of the "trusted computing" project being tossed around by Microsoft, Intel, the **AA's, and others. If they pull your authentication, you cannot and nobody else can access your files made with the programs whose licenses were revoked. It could have good uses, but I am leery of somebody else tampering around with my box. If I did something wrong, then sue me like the law says.

Hmm, don't get me wrong, but with DEs I see KDE is more for geeks and Gnome for the "ordinary employees". Most poor souls come from m$ and they want a simple and less feature-rich desktop. KDE is way to powerful for most of them to handle (I've seen a secretary going crazy looking for the menubar with osx-like style, she just didn't understand it and she's normally clever and not stupid; I guess peoples habits get damaged using m$ crap). Maybe after some month of training a switch can be considered.
yes, i've started with Gnome 1.1 myself some years ago and switched to KDE 2.0 when is was released.

In a workplace, if being "too powerful" is a problem, that's when the administrator steps in and disables/locks out functions that are not desired. KDE provides the means to do this with fully customisable toolbars/menus and the Kiosk framework.

Well, forum trolls keep asserting that KDE was a Windows clone and that's why they don't use it. If you took that face value that would mean that KDE was actually the better DE for "ordinary employees" switching from Windows.

And no, KDE is not just a clone.

> and they want a simple and less feature-rich desktop.

If that were true (*) it could be done by not installing so much software (a much underestimated concept! ;-) and by using the kiosk framework. I doubt the Vienna staff will get to see the full array of educational, development and multimedia software, and all the options.

(*): I doubt especially the "less feature-rich" part, many of KDE's cool features (e.g. mini-CLI via Alt-F2, IO slaves, mouse gestures for the whole desktop and its apps, ...) are hidden and thus don't get in the way of someone who does not use them.

I always find it strange that people keeps claiming things like that Gnome are more for the "ordinary employees". I guess it's some kind of PR spin from the Gnome camp that have caught on, and people keeps on pushing it. It's pretty stange, since close to all the Linux distributions aimed at the newbies and the ones consider most user friendly and easy to install, all are KDE based. When the companies who try to make a living selling easy to use Linux distributions all chose to use KDE, why do people still insist to claim that Gnome are better suited?

I'm not from Gnome, i haven't used it since KDE 2.0. Only I everyday experience people whose systems were switched having an easier time getting used to Gnome than KDE.
For myself, I wouldn't want to work without fish:, man: or webdav: and all those little helpers like Klipper or SuperKaramba. And don't forget about Kontact, although its useful with Gnome too (since Evolution is, well..., somewhat... ugly *duckandcover*).

But don't underestimate sentiment. Europe, due to its long history and dense population, has a tradition of taking care of each other (whereas the US has one of pioneers, american dream). In such a tradition doesn't fit extremely wealthy people nor ghetto's. If MS was more a technological company, rather than a financial one, this wouldn't be a big issue as its now IMO.

We editors don't generally delete non-abusive threads as a rule, so this was basically a mistake. We are discussing it internally.

Danimo did leave a message where the original thread was, but TIM.. found it necessary to followup anyway and ask about it. Since Danimo followed up with a more complete explanation to TIM.., I removed his original note since it was basically a dupe and unnecessary.

I think using KDE/QT will help because QT works better on other platforms like Windows than GTK.

I think savy windows developers would choose QT over MFC because it would make migrating their apps to other operating systems much easier. But the price seems designed to make QT unpopular on Windows.

The only, but serious, drawback to QT is the idiotic pricing for commercial developers. Idiotic because if they reduced their license fee from $4,000+ to a more reasonable <$149, QT development on Windows (for shareware developers and small software startups) will take off. I don't think Microsoft would be making billions today if they were charging $4,000 for Windows 10 years ago.

I am an enterprise developer, and one of those people in a small developer shop many people bang on about. I am going to want to invest in my development tools, end of story. Yes, I'll use free and open source software around as much as I can to give myself the flexibility (and competitive advantage) I need and to ensure I get locked in as little as possible, but I do not expect to develop for nothing.

If people are complaining about shareware developers looking at development tools that they consider to be too expensive, then basically, their software is crap and isn't going to make much. Anyone who has seen 90%+ of shareware can see that, and why the first thing that many people do when they get shareware is to find a crack.

Qt is even an option if you _not_ consider to port the software on other platforms - ever programmed MFC?
$4000 is not too much, and I guess you could use the GPLed edition and sell your software anyways.
Just keep in mind that you have to release your sources under GPL License.

Nice to see something tangible that people are doing on the desktop front. It will be good to see a follow up of details as well so that we know it isn't another China. This is what I've been wanting to see. It's interesting that they're not using Suse, NLD, Mandrake or others, but if this sort of expansion continues (big if) then there will be opportunities for everyone I thin.

Glad to see the Qt rubbish taken down as well, obviously initiated by events elsewhere. A lot of people may not like it, but KDE is undeniably a very nice desktop with good quality features that a lot of people (not involved in this sort of stuff) just want to use. I'm 100% certain that a large portion of that does come from the quality of the Qt toolkit. Kudos to the hard work of the developers and artists etc. of KDE, and most of all, the wonderful attitude KDE's people have that seems to come out in the desktop itself. Rest assured, users do notice it, and goes to show that even the little things matter.